Mackinac Straits & Pictured Rocks, Michigan

» miners castle
I was expecting a tedious ski to Miners Castle since Miners Castle Road is perfectly straight for most of it's duration with only subtle hills.
However, the snow was extremely fast so we could effortlessly glide along and the subtle hills sent us speeding downwards. The sun was shining bright and the temperature was just above freezing, a great day to be outside. Miners Castle is 7 miles RT in winter and it took us about 3 hours.

Miners Castle in horrible light.

The desinigrating ice shelf near Miners Castle.

Me on the edge (Photo by Megan).

Frosted pancake ice.

Pack ice and cliffs to the east.

Skiing in.

Cliffs to the west.

Grand Island.

» munising

Munsing Bay at sunset.

» straits of mackinac
This was the second time I had driven over the bridge at sunset and both times the sky and water/ice were a brilliant blue with a pinkish orange band of color along the horizon. These are some of the most memorable sunsets I've seen and they have made me appreciate the cheesy Michigan license plate that attempts to depict this scene (the bridge at sunset).

Mackinac Bridge.

Left: Mackinac Island. Right: Mackinac City Lighthouse.

Left: The bridge in daylight. Right: Views of ice floes through the railing, hundreds of feet below.

» cut river gorge
I always enjoy the drive along Highway 2 where it hugs the Lake Michigan shore. During this time of year you can see all of the various ice floes on the lake and as we were driving over the Cut River I noticed an ice pile just offshore. So, I ran down the 421 steps to the shore to have a closer look.

The view from above. The Cut River's entrance into Lake Michgan is in the bottom right.

Broken slabs of ice on Lake Michigan near the Cut River. The thicker the ice is, the more blue it becomes, this ice was about 12 inches thick.

When the lake ice gets pushed ashore or into another slab of ice by wind or some other force (I prefer to think of invisible penguins) it creates pressure ridges, like this.